We’re on time this week! Bizarrely…

I’m torn between Slayer’s Raining Blood, played on the banjo, and James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender doing impressions of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen for the greatest thing I’ve seen this week. MacAvoy might win it, solely for the freak out when Stewart asks him to say ‘Space…’

We start this week kind of angry again. I know, I know, what a surprise… Why? I was just getting to that… Film scholar Natalie Wrayford was curious as to the lack of Princess Leia themed merchandise at Disney stores, and got a pretty brutal response to her enquiry. Granted, Disney hasn’t had the license for that long and are no doubt ramping up for Episode 7, but you’d expect them to do better than this. Maybe they haven’t learnt from the recent shortages of Frozen merchandise, or were stuck trying to think of something other than the gold bikini. The outrage has resulted in a Twitter campaign based around the hashtag #WeWantLeia and hopefully will result in some good news, or at least some Leia action figures that aren’t her in the metal bikini. Mind you, we’re also still waiting for JJ Abrams to announce the mystery new female character in Episode 7 – how many Bothan’s have to die for that information? Meanwhile, Leia herself, Carrie Fisher, has spoken about wanting to get the character right, while at a recent convention, also saying she wanted the famous hair buns to return, but in grey.

 Help us Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re our only hope!

 Sydney is joining Melbourne and Brisbane in getting it’s first gamer bar! Spawn Point, located in Clarence St in the CBD, is set to open in August and will feature a mix of new and classic consoles available for play. There’s no word if tabletop gaming will be encouraged, but that would be awesome. In further gaming news, Lego Batman 3 has been announced, with a first trailer being released. There’s also trailers for The Strain, Earth to Echo and The Book of Life (Produced by Guillermo Del Toro) while in an unexpected bonus, there’s the first American trailer for Snowpiercer, which is getting a US release with the 25 minutes that Harvey Weinstein wanted to cut left intact. Hooray for small victories!

Remember the High Elf who attacked a car while on LSD? Well, he gave an interview this week and he’s a very special kind of crazy. Why is it when role-players make the news they always talk to the crazy ones? Couldn’t you just be a regular kind of weird? Like the guy who trimmed his hedge into a Dragon or the academic who claims that Britain has an underground network of 15,000 vampires? (And yes, he claimed role players were among them) There’s also been news about the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons – you’ll be able to get a free PDF of the rules, known as Basic D&D. It’ll contain rules for character levels 1 to 20 and have the Cleric, Fighter, Rogue and Wizard classes, with Dwarf, Elf, Halfling and Human as racial options. At launch it will have the basic, but with the release of the Player’s Handbook in August the PDF will expand to include monsters, magic items and all the rules needed to run the game.

 

 Come on, Papa needs a new Sword of Wounding!

A reboot of the Stargate movie series has been announced, with both Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin working on the project. There’s no word if any of the TV series (SG-1, Atlantis and Universe) will factor into it, but I’m expecting they won’t. Emmerich is currently busy with Independence Day 2, which is being rewritten at the moment. Turning to sequels I actually want to see, Taylor Kitsch has been talking about the John Carter sequel we never got and it’s kind of heartbreaking. For all the flaws that film has, it still deserved a larger audience, or, to be slightly crazy, an audience that gave it a chance in the first place. No, it’s not perfect, and there’s parts that fall over quite badly, but it’s a far better film than the promos made it look like.

A sequel to World War Z is being written, Alfonso Cuaran has said he has no idea no idea about either The Shining prequel  or the Harry Potter spin-off he was said to be directing and the first teaser poster for Bananaman has been released. We still have no idea who’s actually involved with it (The Goodies better be in there somewhere!), but it’s a spiffy poster. Kevin Smith has been claiming that Dawn of Justice is the lead in to a 5-6 movie Justice League series and we have the first on-set photos from the Terminator reboot.

Rumour has it the BBC were considering cancelling Doctor Who after David Tennant left and singer/songwriter Foxes will be appearing in the next season (No, I’ve never heard of her either) while a group of fans with a lot of spare time and talent have created the Doctor singing the Time Warp. I’m honestly surprised it’s taken this long for someone to do that…

Good to know what our parliamentarians are getting paid to argue about.

A casting sheet for the next season of Game of Thrones has been leaked and as it’s mostly Dornish characters, it means my hope of seeing Damphair on screen is even more forlorn. I have no idea why a discount travel website would do this, but cheapflights.com.au featured a Dothraki for Beginners guide. Marvel has cast Daredevil for the Netflix series and John Wesley Shipp (Who played the Flash in the 90’s series) will have a recurring role in the new series. Online service Hulu is in talks to being back Community and Halle Berry’s ‘Rosemary’s Baby in Spaaaaace!’ series Extant will premiere on Amazon Prime.

We end this week with word that two of the most overblown spectacles in recent history are joining forces – there’s to be an Avatar themed Cirque du Soleil show. I remember when James Cameron made movies…

Quote of the Week:

[The Doctor is cornered by four Angel Hosts in the kitchen.]

The Doctor: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! Security protocol one! Do you hear me? One! One-ah! [The Hosts pause their attack.] OK. That gives me three questions. Three questions to save my life, am I right?

Host: Information: Correct.

The Doctor: No, that wasn’t one of them! I didn’t mean it! That’s not fair! Can I start again?

Host: Information: No.

The Doctor: No! No, no, no, no! That wasn’t a question either! Blimey… One question left. One question. All right. So. You’ve been given orders to kill the survivors but survivors; therefore, must be passengers or staff. But not me. I’m not a passenger, I’m not staff. Go ahead, scan me. [The Hosts do so.] You must have bio-records. No such person on board. I don’t exist. Therefore, you can’t kill me. Therefore, I’m a stowaway; and stowaways should be arrested and taken to the nearest figure of authority. And I reckon… the nearest figure of authority… is on deck 31. Final question. Am I right?

Host: Information: Correct.

The Doctor: Brilliant. Take me to your leader. I’ve always wanted to say that!

Doctor Who – Voyage of the Damned 

Cheers,

Gavin